Odds & Ends & Back Again
by Drawnonthewall
Summary: How Brittany and Santana got to where they are in "Sexy".
1. Chapter 1

**This will get less angsty as time goes on, I swear. Tell me what you think, I suppose. **

Just once, I'd like for everything to turn out the way I see it in my head. Just once, I'd like all of my planning to actually be warranted. I'd love to just hand people scripts of what I want them to say, "Hello," I'd say, "just follow along and say everything like you really mean it. Don't improvise and we'll be fine," and then I'd say all the things I'd rehearsed so many times before, and instead of everything going to shit, the people I'm talking to would just read what I wrote for them and that would be that. But no... if I've learned anything, it's that people don't like to be so clearly manipulated and also that Brittany has miraculously undiagnosed severe dyslexia.

So when I walked up to Brittany, my heart in my throat, prepared to bare my soul to her after years of fooling around, I had learned to expect the conversation to go somewhat differently than I'd practiced it in my head. I had not, however, expected her to a) seem unphased by my confession or b) love Artie more than me, or at least enough to turn me down. God, this was the kid who had asked if he could use the 'ostrich eggs I was smuggling in my bra'. I had stomped away after she completely went off script, nearly stumbling drunk on anger, and only seeing red. Red and tears. I contemplated how I had gotten where I currently was. How had this happened to me? How did I end up like this? It was only a kiss.

**Four years previous**

I had met Brittany four years before everything went down. It was the end of our eighth grade year in April, hot and stuffy, but still April nonetheless. I had been lying in the grass in front of my house, which was never comfortable no matter how much I wanted it to be or how many towels I put down to try to but some distance between me and the blades. I had just seen a movie about some surfer girls and was consequentially trying to get a tan like them when a shadow appeared, blocking the sun.

"Move, mom," I mumbled, half asleep from the heat and far too lazy to be bothered to actually look at who was standing over me.

"Not your mom, sweetie." Even back then Quinn had been bitchy. Not anywhere near my level, but she had shown serious potential in those days, before the whole baby debacle made her placate and passive aggressive, rather than outright bitchy.

I pried one of my eyes open to look at my only friend, who was really more of a frenemy than anything at that point. I was only friends with her because she was the only person I could stand, and even that was only about 60% of the time.

"What do you want, egg?" I snapped at her, though my voice had come out lazy and husky, like thick molasses dripping off a spoon.

"Egg?" she questioned, cocking her head to the side.

I groaned, sitting up reluctantly and pushing my sunglasses back, "Faberge eggs. It sounds like Fabray...They were given by Russian royalty to each other in the early 1900's... no? Okay." She looked confused, so I just waved my hand dismissively, intending to move on.

"I ate a Faberge egg once, but I didn't know you needed to take the foil off. It tasted like pennies," an oddly monotone voice sounded behind Quinn, one that I didn't recognize.

"What? No, they're made of gold... Q, who's with you?" I stood up, brushing the imaginary grass off me, wondering who was crazy enough to eat a chocolate egg with the foil still on.

"This is Brittany Pierce. She's in my ballet class. She's the key to our plan for next year," Quinn stepped aside, revealing Vanna White-style a blonde girl, taller than either of us, with a vaguely lost look on her face and a smile that could kill. In that moment, I was sure it had.

"Hi," I said curtly, nodding my head and then turning towards Quinn, not wanting to stare at Brittany, who looked like she could use a hug for no real reason.

"How is she going to help us get on the cheer squad next year? Or make us popular?" I glanced at Brittany, who was now sitting happily on the grass playing with a stray cat that was missing an ear and was notorious for trying to kill people who got too close to it.

"You need to see her dance. She's amazing. We'll get on the cheerios for sure if she teaches us," Quinn said in a conspiratorial tone.

"Q..." I began. Brittany was so hot, I didn't want to ruin it by getting to know her. I hated 99% of the population, so there was very little chance that the foil-eater would be someone I enjoyed.

"No," she said quickly, cutting me off, "she stays. And we're spending the night so that we can start practicing ASAP," she snapped at me. She was one of those people who pronounced ASAP "ay-sap", which drove me insane, so I was pretty much focusing on not yelling at her for that, and by the time I noticed she was gone, she had picked up her bag and strode into my house. I looked down at Brittany, who in turn was squinting up at me, one hand trying to shield her eyes, legs crossed, and a blank look on her face.

"You look like jesus," she said. I didn't know how to respond. "It's okay if you don't like me," she continued, not in a hurt way, just in an honest way that I would come to realize was just how Brittany thought and communicated.

"Stay away from my shit and we'll be even stevens," I said, offering a hand and helping pull her up before leading her into the house.

After a few hours of her trying to show Quinn and I dance moves and then us trying to teach her left and right, we finally went upstairs to get ready for bed. Quinn had already claimed my bed, which normally would have made me furious, since it was _my _house to which she had invited herself and _my _mother who was going to drive her to church in the morning, but since it meant I would be sleeping on the floor next to Brittany, who had quickly captured my imagination (and woken up a maternal instinct that I didn't know even existed with in me), I was alright with the arrangement.

My parents were fighting. This was a common practice when I had friends over, it was like clockwork. The instant I bring friends in the door, they're at each other's throats. Quinn had already pulled some stupid eye mask over her face and jammed ear plugs into her ears, decreeing that she didn't care what we did, but "do not try to wake me up before 8:30", so it was just me, Brittany, and the screaming below. We sat on the plethora of blankets we had covered my floor with, facing one another but not quite looking at each other, trying to pretend we weren't listening to the hateful sounds. Just like every time they fought, I squeezed my eyes shut, wrapped my arms around my legs, tucked my chin against my chest, and prayed for it to go away. Brittany just sat calmly, her legs crossed and her hands sitting limply in her lap, never moving her gaze from a spot on the floor. When my mom finally slammed their bedroom door, I flinched, clenching my fists and willing myself to shut my eyes tighter.

"My parents fight too," Brittany said quietly, finally tearing her gaze form the floor and looking at me.

"Mine don't fight much," I lied, keeping me eyes shut, hoping we could just drop the subject there.

"Sometimes they throw things too," she continued. I opened my eyes at this. "Once, my dad broke his hand punching a wall. He didn't even apologize to it," she mumbled, a sad expression coming over her face. She had already said so many weird things that day, I had figured out that she just saw the world a little differently than the rest of us and decided it was best to stop questioning her comments.

The house had grown quiet and I began to think the fight was over. I sighed deeply and began unclenching my fists, glad it was over for so many reasons. But then the bedroom door slammed open (who knew that was even physically possible?) and my mother began berating my father with renewed fervor. This time, I could hear what they were saying. She was screeching about leaving, about never coming back, and about how, if he was going to sleep around, so was she. He just kept screaming "You don't tell me what to do" over and over again. Luckily, it was all in Spanish, so the intricacies of my family's dysfunction remained unknown to Brittany, but anger is an emotion that transcends language barriers, and fury was something everyone understood. This time, the front door slammed, and with it, my father screamed, "Then go, you whore!". I waited, holding my breath, hoping I wouldn't hear the car pull out of the driveway, but sure enough, the wheels squealed as she began driving away from our house as quickly as possible. Driving away from me. With that, I broke down sobbing. It wasn't the first time she had left, but it was the first time I'd been home when she departed, and it was the first time I was afraid she wouldn't be back. I tried to close my eyes even tighter and attempted to strangle the sobs.

I remember feeling hopeless for an instant, but then Brittany put her arms around me and pulled me close, letting me rest my head on her lap while I bawled. She didn't say anything. I think she knew that there was nothing to say. She hummed and she stroked my hair, which was more than enough for me. Somewhere between her humming some cartoon theme and me realizing I felt safe for the first time in a long time, I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning, her arms still wrapped tightly around me and my eyes puffy from crying. I barely knew her, and already she had seen more of the real me than anyone else. I should have known what was coming at that point, but hey, hindsight is 20/20.


	2. Chapter 2

There's a phenomenon where, once your attention is drawn specifically to something, something you've never noticed before, you begin seeing it all over the place. I think it has a name, but shit if I remember, I get too distracted by the sound of Mrs. Green's jaw flapping up and down to actually listen to anything she says. The point is, after I met Brittany and she accidentally became my closest confidant, I began seeing her everywhere.

Between classes on Monday, I watched her blonde ponytail bob up and down as she made her way easily down the crowded hall of our school. Tuesday, I caught sight of her before lunch and was so mesmerized by her happy child-like demeanor that I ran into some puny kid who looked like he was six, and while I was mumbling something about watching where he was going, I ran into some Asian girl with a bad stutter who looked like she was about to hurl when I glared at her. Her, I did apologize to... gruffly, but still, it counts. I kept walking while I whipped my head around in one last desperate attempt to catch sight of Brittany and managed to smack straight into a huge cement column, much to the amusement of Quinn, who had witnessed the whole messy thing, beginning to end.

"You need to be more careful with your leering, Lopez," she scoffed, though I was pretty sure she hadn't seen _who _I was staring at, just that I had, indeed, been staring at someone.

"Shut up, Fabray, like I don't see how you stare at that giant Frankenstein kid," I shot back, still half stuck in a daze from seeing Brittany. Or maybe it was the multiple collisions. Usually I would have made some reference to her creepy obsession with the loud girl with the multiple dads, which would have cut a lot deeper. As it was, we walked off together only vaguely annoyed at one another.

During the morning on Thursday, I saw Brittany getting snapped at for ruining someone's science project. She just stood there, flinching at every insult, staring at the ruined project on the floor. I knew the boy who was yelling at her, calling her stupid and idiotic and moronic. I had English with him later that day, during which I cornered him and promised to rip both of his crooked dumbo-sized ears from his pathetic skull if he ever talked to Brittany like that again. I can't be sure, but I think he crapped his pants while he cowered against the wall, which I thought was only fair.

On Friday, I saw Brittany again, this time sitting in front of the school, her arms wrapped around her legs protectively. This was weird for two reasons. One, it was pouring down rain. Like, monsoon-level rain fall, and two, she didn't look like she was going to move anytime soon, and school was long since over. Normally, I would have rolled my eyes and skulked the four blocks to my house, but, like I said, Brittany was different.I watched her for a moment, making sure she wasn't just sitting there because she wanted to be. Her long blonde hair was long since soaked and dripping wet, sticking to her cheeks and eyelashes as she slowly blinked the rain from her eyes, her entire outfit was likewise soaked and clinging to her, making it look like she was being suffocated by her clothing. I walked up to her, hoping the water she was blinking from her eyes was just rain and not tears. I wasn't good with tears.

"Hey, Brittany?" I took a tentative step towards her, trying to stay under my oversized umbrella.

"Santana," she smiled sweetly up at me, though the smile didn't reach her eyes. Those blue pools of oblivion could still break your heart from sadness. She looked like a puppy dog, wet hair dripping and big sad eyes looking up at me.

"Do you have a ride?" I looked around, praying I would see a car pulling up to get her.

"Yeah. Sometimes my dad forgets, though," she said quietly, looking down.

I groaned internally. I didn't want to sit down and get soaked, but I couldn't leave her alone. "I'll wait until he comes," I said as happily as I could, sitting down next to her and sharing my umbrella with her. I tried to sound happy, but I'm pretty sure it came out as a groan.

"Thank you, Santana," she muttered, and with that, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. It was sweet and innocent, but still... It felt like a million unsaid words. I patted her knee comfortingly and scooted closer in order to get us both under the umbrella fully and said truthfully, "No problem, Brit."

We waited there until the grey sky grew even darker and the streetlights began to flicker on.

"Your dad's not coming is he, Brit?" I groaned and looked at her.

She just kept her eyes fixed on the parking lot, "Yeah he is, he always comes eventually," she insisted.

"You know what? Your dad sounds like a jerk. This is some grade-a bullshit. Come to my house and we'll call him," I was pissed as hell that he could have forgotten her.

"Thank you for being here, Santana," she stood up and stretched.

"I'll always be here for you, Brittany," I don't know what possessed me to say that, since I had known her less than a week, but I did, and I knew that I meant it.

"Pinky promise?" She offered me a pinky solemnly.

I grabbed her pinky and smiled. "Pinky promise." We walked home like that, swinging our linked pinkies in the air and stopping at each puddle so that Brittany could splash in every single one, despite the fact that she wasn't wearing rain boots.

Her mom got off work at 1:00 AM, too late to pick Brittany up, so we just decided to leave a message saying that Brittany was staying with a friend and they could pick her up from school tomorrow. She fell asleep on my orange couch clutching a pillow while the t.v. entertained itself. My mom, who had long since returned from the fight, decided to hold her questions for the morning after seeing Brittany with her lost-puppy look and soaking clothes, and instead busied herself taking care of the pathetic little girl whose parents forgot she existed. After Brittany began snoring on the couch, my mom helped me carry her up to my room, where Brittany promptly fell asleep on the floor while I was trying to move the covers on my bed for her to get under.

"No, s'alrigh'. Leave m'," she mumbled angrily when I tried to move her, waving one hand blindly in an attempt to bat me away. So there she stayed, on the floor of my room, wearing a pair of my shorts and an old sweatshirt of mine while her clothes dried. Some time in the night, she had reached over and grabbed my hand that was hanging over the side of my bed, because when I woke up the next morning, I was holding her hand. This would soon become a common occurrence, as would her staying over on school nights, weekends and non-major holidays, though I didn't know it that morning. I just knew this girl who looked like an overgrown toddler holding my hand had completely captured my heart, which was an odd feeling, since I hadn't been sure if I even had a heart that could be captured up until that moment.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry this one was a little delayed. It's longer than the others, I hope that makes up for it. Give me your opinions, people!**

Life with Brittany was easy. My patience, which was non-existent for the rest of the world, seemed to be endless for her. Unlike everyone else in the world, she was ernest, she was honest, and that meant she never lied for her own gain. She lied to protect her friends or, in some weird cases, her cats, but she never thought of lying as a way to get what she wanted, and that's what made her so special. Hell, even I had lied for my own gain. In fact, I did it on a regular basis, but I tried never to do it to Britt. Everyone else had a hidden agenda, but everything about Brittany was out in the open. Everything except her home life. She never told anyone anything about what went on inside her home aside from me.

Her parents fought, a lot. Even louder and more often than mine did. It's not that the Pierce parents were bad people, they really weren't, but they weren't good for one another.

Something about her mom brought out the worst in her father and vice versa. I had seen them try as hard as they could to hold their tongues, but it was always just delaying the inevitable.

So, they stopped pretending and just let loose whenever they grew angry with one another.

This happened so often that Brittany spent most nights in her little sister's room, trying to calm the three year old down enough to go to sleep while her parents argued in the living room.

By June of eighth grade, she had begun sneaking out on particularly bad nights after she got her sister to sleep, riding her bike the five miles to my house and climbing up the tree in our front yard to come sleep in my bed.

I remember the first night she came in. I thought I was dreaming when her thin body swung from the tree into my open window.

"San?" She crouched like a burglar looking for me in the dark.

"Brittany? What are you doing here? It's like… two in the morning," I groaned, looking at my alarm clock.

"I can't sleep. My parents are screaming at each other and Lord Tubbington is being mean, too. Can I get in?" She motioned to my bed. I nodded quickly and moved the covers to let her in.

"Wait, your cat? How can a cat be mean?" I looked at her in the dark.

"Yeah. He was just saying mean things," she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I shook my head and pulled her closer to me.

"It'll be okay, Britt. You're safe," I whispered as she curled closer to me, her knees hitting my stomach as she curled into the fetal position "I'll keep you safe," I promised, more to myself than to her.

We didn't do anything that night, or any of the subsequent nights, either. We were only thirteen, and she was Brittany. She needed innocent comfort, and I was more than willing to give it.

My parents pretty much accepted her as an addendum to our family after the fifth consecutive morning of finding her sitting crisscross on the kitchen counter eating dry cereal because she forgot what the refrigerator was.

They also took it upon themselves to label the fridge "milk's house" so that Brittany would remember. That's just what she does to people, adults especially. She charms them into helping her without meaning to.

She still taught Quinn and I dance twice a week, and despite having weird ways of describing moves, she was actually a pretty decent teacher. She never got angry or frustrated, and she even melted Quinn's frigid little heart a bit.

That's how we were. I had a stone heart, Quinn had an icicle lodged in her chest and called it a heart, and Brittany was like a ray of sunshine mixed with a battering ram… okay bad image, but you get it. She made us more human, at least with her. We were still pretty much co-HBICs at school.

We began planning our life for the coming year that summer. We planned out how, after we got onto the Cheerios and one of us made head cheerleader, we would all find studs to date, preferably varsity football players. In August, just before the new school year was about to start, Quinn decided we should all spend the night at her house. That's when everything started to change for Brittany and I, I think. Looking back, that's when we changed courses.

I want to take this moment to say that, by this point, Brittany was pretty much a regular fixture at my house and we had gotten so used to cuddling at night that my kissing her softly while we were laying in bed together didn't seem that odd, since it had started out as a reassuring "I'll-always-be-here-for-you-and-you're-not-stupid-despite-what-you-heard-your-parents-say" type of thing, then it just became rote. When we were alone together and needed comfort, we were there for each other. So, with that covered, back to the story.

It was August and, again, it was disgustingly hot, and again, Quinn had gone to sleep by 10:00, which left me and Brittany laying on the floor, my arm wrapped protectively around her while we talked about next year and all the classes we had together. After a few hours, I decided we needed to go to sleep and turned off the lights.

"Good night, B," I murmured as I laid down, leaning in to kiss her goodnight, a common practice between us by this point. This night was different though. Brittany increased the kiss, leaned in and deepened it, running her tongue along my lower lip.

"Br-Britt-" I stuttered, pulling apart and trying to see her expression in the dark, "Who stuck something in your water?" I joked, though I wondered for a moment if she was on something. She had never done anything like this.

"What? No one," she said, confused.

"Well, why'd you do that for?" I asked, still trying to hold her at arm's length.

"Because I like you, Santana, and this is how people show affection," she said, and I swear I could hear a smirk in her voice as she grabbed my shoulders and rotated, throwing a leg over my torso so she was straddling me, pinning my hands slightly to my side.

"But, B. Quinn's right there!" I hissed, nodding towards her bed.

"She doesn't ever wake up from anything," she stated plainly. She was right, Quinn was astoundingly hard to wake up from her beauty sleep.

I nodded my head in agreement as Brittany leaned down and kissed me again, letting go of my arms as she let her hands travel in a unmistakably downward direction. I threw my arms around her and pulled her closer to me.

… And if you think you're getting anything else out of me about that night, you're completely insane. But that's what happened. Our first time was awkward and timid and filled with 'sorry, is this okay?' and 'no, wait, okay, what if I shift like this- no now you're on my hair', but it was special somehow, even if Fabray was a few feet from us. Neither of us really could figure out what it meant, but we both knew we enjoyed it, so we continued doing it at every moment we could. When my parents went out to dinner together and left me and Britt alone, when Quinn went to sleep, when Brittany crawled through my window at night, and pretty much any time we were at least basically alone.

One night when Brittany snuck in at about four in the morning with tears streaming down her face because her mom had broken their coffee table in a fight, I jut held her until she fell asleep, whimpering and hiccuping. As I listened to her breathing against my chest and rested my chin on her head, In the early light of day, something struck me. Something I hadn't thought of before.

I realized that people would hate us if they found out. People who didn't even know us would judge us. They would hate us for loving each other, and they would hate Brittany. That was absolutely unacceptable. No one had any right to hate Brittany without even getting to know her simply because of me. And if people found out about us at school… my reign would be over. I had spent years cultivating a curtain of mystery around me, like a horrible, cruel wizard of Oz. The dumb asses at school couldn't touch me, because they had no idea what I was like past my scowl and viscous words, so they had no ammunition.

Brittany had somehow gotten past that persona, but she was different… she felt like breathing. Like before I met her, I was suffocating, and when I met her, I realized what I was missing and let her inside involuntarily, like gasping for air after trying to hold your breath for too long. I let her in by accident, but I didn't kick her out once she arrived, because who was I to reject breathing? She was everything to me.

But those idiots I was forced to call peers would never see the real me, because then they would see how utterly fragile I was. So, it was that night that I decided I couldn't let anyone in, and maybe, I would have to push Brittany out a little, too, because I couldn't risk letting anyone have as much power over me as she did.

Brittany still slept in my bed on nights her parents sounded like they would burst blood vessels screaming, and we still screwed like bunnies, but when September rolled around and we started school, I started sleeping with this stupid mohawk'd kid, Puck, who had failed Freshman year and was going to repeat it. He was dumb as rocks, but he was hot and he had the power in school. Brittany no longer owned all of me, and that made it better. I stopped telling her I loved her… and that was my first mistake.


	4. Chapter 4

The days passed slowly when Brittany and I weren't together. The days passed slowly but the years passed quickly. By the start of sophomore year, we had gotten used to being little more than fuck buddies when we weren't at school.

By the middle of freshman year, the "I love you"s that I had been forcing myself to choke back stopped coming, and Brittany grew used to the colder, more distant me.

Honestly, I felt like my humanity was slipping away. Brittany had made me the most human I had ever felt for about four months, but I wigged out and backed off, so I went back to my old ways, devoid of much empathy or sympathy.

During the summer between Freshman and Sophomore year, when B's mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, I wasn't there the way I should have been. I left my window open for her at night to come and cry, but she slowly stopped coming, and I knew why. She needed someone there to comfort her during the day.

During the early mornings when her mom couldn't sleep and paced the house, unaware Brittany could hear her heavy footsteps.

She needed someone during the days her mom had to go to the hospital to get tests.

She needed someone when her mom underwent a double mastectomy.

She needed someone there to give her strength while her dad cried like a little boy.

She needed someone to hug joyously when they found out the surgery had been a success, her mom was cancer-free and didn't need chemo.

She needed someone I couldn't be. I

watched all this unfold. All I could do was stand by and watch, because it was too risky to get involved. I couldn't risk falling in love again with Brittany, because I knew I wouldn't be able to fall out of it.

The only good thing that came out of that horrible time was her parents began going to counseling.

They went daily for a while, began talking out their issues rather than simply screaming until they were hoarse, began learning to put their children first, rather than forgetting they existed. They began taking Brittany's little sister to the park to play, teaching Brittany to drive.

They began being a real family for the first time in their lives.

That's when Brittany started spending the night as a friend, coming in through the front door, walking home with me on Friday afternoons with a sleeping bag under her arm and a smile on her face, rather than sneaking in through my window at one in the morning with a tear stained face, sobbing into my shoulder until she fell into a shuttering, hiccuping light sleep.

It felt like I blinked and in that instant we went from top dogs to bottom of the heap, all because of Glee club.

"Quinn. Why should B and I help you get into glee club? That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. And you've come up with some pretty goddamned stupid ones over the years," I snapped the day she told me what she wanted to do. I still protected Brittany at school, kept us as a unit rather than two separate people. I was the hard exoskeleton and she was the soft inside.

"Santana. You're doing this. I need to keep that creepy jewish hobbit off my man!" Quinn had snapped right back at me. This was the same girl she stared at during passing period and obsessed over with unabashed intensity. Suddenly, though, everything was about that stupid knuckle-dragger, Finn.

God, what kind of a name is Finn, anyway? It's so stupid. Who names their kid after an appendage? No one names their kid "Arm", but "Finn" is okay? Really?

Anyway.

"It might be fun," Brittany had mumbled with a small smile playing on her lips, "Please can we do it, Santana?" She looked at me with those lost puppy dog eyes and lightly touched my elbow and I was sold.

She still had more control over me than I cared to admit, but the truth is, I was whipped, even if Brittany didn't know it.

I groaned loudly, "Fine! I'm only doing this because I'll get to make fun of those stupid glee clubbers," I lied. Brittany squealed happily and hugged me tightly while Quinn stared me down, upset I had even questioned her decision. I glared back while squeezing B closer to me, wanting to punch Fabray in the face for making me possibly compromise my social status.

Everything changed a year later.

It felt like I blinked and our loyalty went from Sue to Shue.

Truth be told, when Sue tried to stick Brittany into a cannon, any part of humanity I had that still liked the cheerios left.

Who tries to shove Britt into a freaking cannon? Honestly?

But I guess that's why I was alright with telling Brittany how I felt. I had so little to lose, telling her wouldn't compromise that.

I didn't really have a plan when I walked up to her after saying "I love you"… and I think that was my second mistake.

"Hey. Can we talk?" My head felt like it was filled with helium. I wasn't really sure what I was doing. I had practiced this speech every second of every day since she had asked me what our relationship was, but I hadn't expected to ever need to remember it. I knew what I wanted her to say, but I had no idea what I wanted say.

I just knew that when I sang Landslide with her, I had fallen back into love with her… like I had been standing on the edge of a cliff with my toes hanging off, and all these years I had resisted the urge to jump, but somewhere between trying not to cry and choking out the lyrics, I let gravity take over and I fell.

I didn't jump.

It wasn't a choice.

I just fell back into love with Brittany, stronger than any emotion I had ever felt.

"But we never do that," she looked so confused. It was my own fault, I hadn't shown her this side of me for years. She was bound to be confused when her actual friend from eighth grade resurfaced. But that look on her face, and those sad little words… they cut me so deep.

I guess it's like wearing sunglasses and then taking them off under fluorescent lights. Everything feels so much _more._

"Yeah… I know…" and that's sort of all I remember.

I rambled and I cried and I thought about how badly I wanted her and how perfect my life, our lives, would be if she would just be with me.

But I guess I never exactly thought she would completely reject me.

"I do love you, but I love Artie too," and with that, she smudged out her love for me and covered it with love for some idiot who thought she believed in magical combs.

It broke my heart that had only just started to beat again.


End file.
